Golden rules to keep projects alive

It should not happen, but it still does. Side projects keep dying. May someone starts a game and never finishes it. Now this person has a folder, which he is avoiding all the time.

In this story, we will cover the two golden rules.

Rule one

Kill perfectionism. When releasing a game, it must not be perfect. If the game is playable, then it can be released. When something is not ready yet, then fix it afterwards.

Take large companies as an example. They let people buy a game before it is out, and then it is not even as stable as expected. After like two years, many games are in the state in which they should have been earlier.

Doing this will also motivate. Getting some user feedback and seeing how users react to a project.

Imagine someone keeps modifying the project because he is never satisfied with it. When doing a thing for a long time without any result, people lose their motivation, which is the number one reason why (side) projects die.

Rule two

Set milestones. Someone cannot just say “Milestone #1 Finish the game”. People need that feeling, to have something accomplished. Finishing a game is a huge task, which can take up to years. When working on a large project for several months and all the milestones are unreached, this can kill the motivation. Then it starts that the developer as an example avoids opening his folder on his desktop after some time because the developer has no motivation to keep working.

There are two ways to avoid scenarios like this. Combining both is an effective way to keep a project alive.

Smaller goals

When having several milestones for each day or week can help a lot. It makes one feel good, after striking some smaller tasks from the todo list.

Time limits

For each milestone also set a time limit. Creating time limits prevents wandering around and working on many different things at once but not finishing one.

It just pushes someone, to do a particular task now and not tomorrow.

Conclusion

There is not always a personal coach which shouts at you what to do. Set your goals and try to reach them in a specific period.